


planning my escape

by escherzo



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (v.v the Flesh attack), Body Horror, Canon Divergence, Gen, Jonathan Sims/Martin Blackwood undertones, S3 AU, The Flesh Attack, Web Martin Blackwood, Web!Martin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:22:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22207810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escherzo/pseuds/escherzo
Summary: “I amnot going to be Tim.”He prayed. He had nothing else left.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 121





	planning my escape

**Author's Note:**

> i love how s4 played out but god i really, really love web!martin still

“Statement of Martin Blackwood, acting--” 

Martin's fingers twitch. The prickling sensation at the back of his neck settles heavy on him and makes him shudder, and for a moment all he can see is the faint layer of dust on Jon's desk. The nearly imperceptible disruptions through it, branching out in every direction. The patterns of a hundred skittering legs. 

“Statement of Martin Blackwood,” he tries again. “Acting Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute..”

The words are still new. Still fresh on his tongue. But it doesn't matter.

He has a story to weave. 

*

The thing is.

The thing is—when the Flesh attacked, there was no one there to save him. 

It was a cold, dreary Tuesday morning, and Jon was asleep. His gaunt, pockmarked face was still. His chest did not rise. The rich brown of his skin had a duller gray undertone every time Martin visited, wedging himself into a cold plastic chair he didn't fit in, watching the jags of the EEG move because it was easier to see that than to look at the dead man in the hospital bed in front of him, than to think about the sharp, antiseptic smell that clung to his nostrils, than to remember that two weeks before that, in a chair just like this one, he had watched his mother's chest rise and fall until it didn't. Until the final, miserable flatline of the machines and the rush of the doctors and nurses into the room to break the silence as they tried, and failed, to bring life back to a woman determined that it was well past her time to go. 

Martin's vigil lasted two hours that morning. It was just past seven thirty in the morning when he forced himself to stand and leave for the Archives. 

No one else was there. The halls stood silent, a haze of dust settling in the air like a physical weight, as though they knew Jon was no longer there to observe them and so didn't feel the need to keep up appearances. There was something in the air that left him prickling with unease, but he was so used to the way the Eye clung to him that he didn't realize until it was too late that this was a different unease altogether.

There was something facing the door of Jon's office. It looked like a person, at first, until he looked closer and saw the way that its arms hung down further than arms should. The way it faced the door but its knees faced him. The unnatural stillness of its body. 

It turned and it had no nose or eyes. Its mouth took up the whole of its face and it opened wide, cavernous and dripping, and all of its teeth were needle-sharp.

 _Carnivore_ , some part of Martin registered, and then the panic kicked in. 

He ran.

Its flesh made a wet, sickening sound as it followed him, slapping along the ground, legs bending in a way legs were not meant to bend as its backwards, twisted form chased him, and he could hear it panting like a dog as he sprinted towards the door. Its tongue, long and split down the middle, lolled out of its mouth. 

Melanie was at the entrance, and there was something behind her. Martin had been clumsy as a child, had heard so many times that he was “all elbows” that the thought that went through his head at the sight of it was in his mother's voice.

The thing behind her was all elbows, too.

“Run!” he yelled, and she looked behind her just long enough to see it before she took off running with him. 

“What the hell is that thing?” she managed, surging ahead with a sprinter's strength and the burst of fresh adrenaline.

“Those things,” Martin corrected, panting. “Don't look behind me. Where's Basira?”

“I don't know. Where do we _go_?” 

“I don't know. Oh, g-d.” 

The thing that had been behind Melanie didn't run. It _rolled_ , impossibly angled joints popping as it moved across the carpeted hallway towards them. For a moment, Martin was frozen, and then Melanie grabbed his hand and yanked hard enough to hurt, dragging him along with her. 

“We have to _go,_ ” she said. “You know this place better than me. _Where?_ ” 

“Second door on the left,” he choked out, survival instincts kicking in. “Sealed room. We stayed there during—Prentiss.” 

“Right. Okay. Any weapons?” 

“Left my pocket knife in there before. Might still be there.” 

They sprinted for the door and slammed it shut behind them, and Martin flipped the locks in quick succession, one, two, three, and then all there was was the sound of their heavy breathing. 

“We have to tell Basira,” Melanie panted. “If she's not in yet—we can't--” 

“Call her,” Martin said, already scouring the room for anything that could be used as a weapon. Pocket knife. Heavy book. Elias's murder pipe. 

Basira's phone went straight to voicemail. 

“Shit. _Shit._ ” Melanie dialed again. 

“So, uh, so that's the Flesh I think. Or some of them. We haven't done anything to them, really, so I don't know why they would be here, but uh, maybe Jon did something to piss them off? Maybe they were on Nikola's side? I guess it could be--” 

“Martin,” Melanie said, cutting him off. “Breathe.” 

“I'm _trying_ ,” Martin bit out. There wasn't so much as a corkscrew in the room, and the door shook, the wet sounds of flesh slapping against metal. G-d, what he would give for some of Jon's stash of C4 right about now, even knowing what it had done to him. To Tim. 

Melanie's phone buzzed. 

“Basira's here. Oh, god. She says she made for the tunnels. Can't talk or they might find her. There's more of them out there. She says she saw two, and if the two that were chasing us are outside this door--”

“Where is Elias's _bloody_ murder pipe when you need it?” Martin yelled, throwing a useless, empty cardboard box against the wall. 

“Martin.” 

“Shut _up_.” Martin's voice cracked, going high-pitched and shrill. “Shut up. Just let me think.” 

The door shook again, harder this time.

He sat down on the floor cross-legged and closed his eyes. Prentiss. They'd been prepared for Prentiss. They had gas canisters, corkscrews, a fire suppression system. This time, they were trapped in the sealed room with nothing that could be turned into a weapon.

“I am not going to be Tim,” he said.

Tim. Beautiful, funny Tim, who had spent two years going cold and bitter and ended up barely enough bits for a closed casket funeral. All the authorities had been able to find were his feet. 

“Martin--”

“I am _not going to be Tim._ ” 

He prayed. He had nothing else left. Not to a deity he barely believed in, because the things outside could not exist in a world that was being watched over by anything capable of love, but to--

 _Anything that's listening. Anything that's ever wanted me. Please._ Please. _I will do whatever you ask of me if you will just let us live._

He thought of Mike Crew. Of his leap of faith.

 _I am yours._

Something tugged at the back of his mind. A tiny nudge, like a thread being pulled, and he closed his eyes and gave himself to it. 

He stood up.

“... Martin?” 

Martin walked towards the door in a trance, eyes open wide, and he placed his hands against the metal. He could feel the threads woven around the things outside the door, and he reached out and _yanked._

“You don't want to do this to us,” he said, and the noises outside the door halted. He flipped one lock. Two. 

“What the hell are you doing?” Melanie asked, backing away from the door. 

Three.

“You want to leave the Archives and walk into the Thames,” Martin said, finding another thread and twisting it around his finger as the door opened and he faced the not-people frozen in place at the threshold. “You want to dig into the muck at the bottom and stay there. That's where you belong. Bring your friends. They belong with you too.”

The twisted, broken things began to shuffle towards the door of the Archives, and a moment later were joined by two others. Something with rippling muscles and a third arm broken and protruding from the flesh in the center of its chest. Something else that might have been a woman, once, but was now a mass of bones, ribcage poking through its skin. 

As soon as they crossed the threshold, Martin collapsed.

He didn't wake again for three days. 

*

He dreamed of the spiders. Every one he had ever cradled gently in his palms to take outside before Jon squashed it. Every one he had crooned to, petting a tiny, hairy back as it crawled across his kitchen counter. Charlotte, the loyal companion above his sink, faithfully devouring fruit flies. And then something much larger. 

“The Mother has always been fond of you,” the great black widow he Knew was Annabelle Cane murmured, holding him close. “We only ever wished you would love us back.” 

“I did,” he told her. “I was—I was just afraid.” 

“You have been so lonely,” Annabelle said, stroking his hair with a feeler the size of an arm. “We were afraid we might lose you to the One Alone. But you never have to be afraid again. Alone again. You are part of the great Web, and we love you.” 

Martin's eyes filled with tears, and her third and fourth limbs held him closer. 

“Will I—Will I have to hurt anyone?” he asked. 

“No one who doesn't deserve it,” she said. “And when your Archivist awakes, he will help you. He will Know the world around you and who needs to be caught in our web.”

“When will that be?”

“Oh, love,” she said, brushing a tear away from his cheek. “We know the waiting is hard. He has a choice to make. To let the End take him or give up his humanity to stay alive. But he will make the right choice. You only need to be patient. And we will be with you while you wait.” 

“Is there anything I can do for him?” he asked, his voice wavering. 

She shook her head. “This is his choice, but we have been guiding him, and he will not let the End take him. It will be alright.”

“Thank you,” he said, finally. “For saving us. For listening.”

Annabelle shook her head. “You called out to us. We had been waiting for so long for you. Thank you.” 

He looked down and could see Charlotte on his hand. Remembered countless lonely nights in the kitchen of his flat, talking to her because there was no one else to talk to, humming softly to her as he did the washing up. 

He stroked her back gently, and when she bit down on the thin skin of his wrist, right at the vein, it didn't hurt at all. 

*

“Statement of Holly Turner, concerning a cult that bought the fields behind her house. Statement begins.” 

Martin smiles as Charlotte skitters out from under his sleeve and nuzzles at his fingers curled around the tape recorder. The Eye watches over him but no longer traps him here. Peter Lukas runs the Institute, but took one look at him and sighed, knowing the claim that burned under his skin, and told him that he would be Head Archivist until Jon returned instead of trying to draw him towards the Lonely. 

All he has to do is wait until Jon wakes up. And Jon will wake up.

He just has to be patient.


End file.
